so i folded like a lawn chair and bought the 105 and all its goodness with it. take it home- apply with a slow hardener, its been damn near 24 hours and its still tacky... wtf is going on here, the boat is outside- low was 75 last night and its been near 100 degrees all day. I mixed the hardener just as it told me too. what im afraid of now is that i have coated all this crap and now its gonna be near impossible to get off. any suggestions here

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first as for drips let it cure then scrape it gently, it will take some paint with it.

as for the cure try a hair dryer on it, although at 100 degrees it should have cured. You could take and add a thin layer over the tacky stuff with a little mixed resin with fast hardner. some will say no, but you can try a small area and see what happens. as for the pumps i hate them, almost every set of pumps i have bought where off. i use measured mixing cups, add 5 oz of resin one of hardner then mix. sense using measure cups i have never had a problem but i did lots of times with the pumps.

ditto on the problem with pumps. I also usually 'purge' each pump a bit before I take a metered amount.

Also, I use a 2 cup system to mix to ensure thorough mixing of the hardner and resin: Meter to the first cup and mix; then pour the first cup to a second cup and continue the mix --- seems to get a more consistent mix that way and avoids having an inconsistent mix of hardner/resin if you use only one cup.

As regards your thin slow curing layup, definitely increase the surface temp to accelerate the cure; for every 20 deg. C increase you 'double' the cure time rate.

It's pretty obvious that the epoxy resin to hardener mix was wrong, for whatever reason. In temps above 75˚, getting a decent working time, even with slow hardener is difficult. Personally, I think West Systems epoxy is over-rated and over-priced. I generally recommend and use epoxy from Progressive Epoxy Polymers in NH: epoxyproducts.com. Paul knows his stuff.

Like Tommays, I don't use mixing pumps... they're convenient but can often give you the wrong ratios, especially the initial few pump strokes.

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Telstar 28
New England

You know what the first rule of sailing is? ...Love. You can learn all the math in the 'verse, but you take
a boat to the sea you don't love, she'll shake you off just as sure as the turning of the worlds. Love keeps
her going when she oughta fall down, tells you she's hurting 'fore she keens. Makes her a home.

—Cpt. Mal Reynolds, Serenity (edited)

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I never go by volume for epoxy, I weigh the components. Pumping just wastes valuable time, and is prone to errors. When weighing materials, read the directions, because the specific gravity of the two components may differ. I do believe West is a 5:1 mix both by volume, and weight. System three, however, is a 2:1 mix by volume, but only 44% by weight.

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